When you submit a notice of infringement using our online reporting form, our Legal Response and Enforcement team reviews the notice to ensure it contains all of the required information listed in our Intellectual Property Policy. We may be unable to process your notice in certain situations. This may be the case if: 

• your notice didn’t contain all of the required information,

• you may have misidentified the type of intellectual property right claimed to have been infringed or the basis of your claim,

• you submitted a trademark claim without including a valid, active, registered trademark,

• you submitted a trademark claim that included a mark on the supplemental register,

• you cited allegedly infringing material that does not appear to relate to the registered trademark cited in your notice, or

• the jurisdiction of your registered patent appears to be inapplicable to the seller’s location or delivery areas.

Your notice didn’t contain all of the required information

You can find our submission requirements in Our House Rules. Here are some common errors:

• Not including your full name, complete physical address, telephone number, and/or email address.
• Not including sufficient detail of the work claimed to have been infringed. When the reporting form asks for authorized examples of your work, you must provide links or a description of your own work, not the allegedly infringing seller’s material.
• Reporting shop names instead of URLs to their listings. In order for us to process an infringement notice regarding listing content, we need each listing’s URL, not the username or shop name. An Etsy listing URL looks like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/####

You may have misidentified the type of intellectual property right claimed to have been infringed or the basis of your claim

There are appropriate reporting paths for copyright, trademark, and patent claims, each of them with their own requirements. If you're unsure which path to use, you may consult an attorney.

You submitted a trademark claim without including a valid, active, registered trademark

We may not be able to process your trademark claim if your trademark is “dead” or inactive. If you only have a trademark application but your trademark has not yet been registered, we may not be able to process your notice. Should your application receive approval, you may consider resubmitting your notice of infringement with a valid trademark using our online reporting form.

You submitted a trademark claim that included a mark on the supplemental register.

If your trademark is on the supplemental register rather than the principal register, we require additional information to show that the term is sufficiently distinctive and functions as an indication of source.

You cited allegedly infringing material that does not appear to relate to the registered trademark cited in your notice.

If the allegedly infringing listings do not include your registered trademark, we may not be able to process your claim.

If the allegedly infringing listings do not appear to use the trademark term as a source indicator, we may ask you to provide additional information to support your claim, including any evidence indicating that the use of the term is not merely ornamental or decorative.

The jurisdiction of your registered patent appears to be inapplicable to the seller’s location or delivery areas.

We may not be able to process your patent claim in cases where the jurisdiction of your patent does not align with the allegedly infringing seller’s location or delivery areas.

What if none of these apply to me?

If you believe the above reasons do not apply to the rejection of your claim, you may provide additional documentation by replying to the rejection email you received. Our Legal Response and Enforcement team will review your email and respond accordingly.